Search tips

Large organisations often have a  web-site that consist of their name and an extension (.com, .us, .uk, .net etc.) (Supose you want to visit the website of a company called "Mycomp", but you don't know the url. When its a big american  company the url proberbly will be something like mycomp.com or mycomp.us. You can do the same with a lot of other subjects: when you want to buy an object, just type www.object.com and you'll see a site about books. Ussually company's that registred object names are large commercial company's or traders in internet names.

In Holland you'll find tourist information of a place by typing vvv before the name of the place and use the extension .nl (For example: www.vvvamersfoort.nl) . Typing the name of the place with the extension .nl will give you the website of the city. (www.amersfoort.nll)

Lots of internetproviders have a startpage with a lot of usefull links. There're also lots of special link pages. 

There're a lot of search engines on the internet. Google is the bigest one at the moment. When you search you sometimess can select a region first. When you need something special, try to use specific terms.

In the bookstore there're often small books or magazines with the latest tips. These magazines can be verry handy. A website that's great in 2004 can be bought in 2005 by another company and changed into an awful commercial junksite. In the magazines you often get handy tips about nice sites, free tools etc. 

On my webpage  links I've mentioned some  HANDY sites. Because I'm dutch I have more sites on the dutch links part than on the english links part.

Security:

Through  web-scripts it's possible that virusses are activated on the pc. You can control the security in windows through: Start-Control panel-internet options.

A lot of websites use (java)scripts or cooky's. A scripts is a small programm in a webpage. A cooky is a piece of information, left on your computer. Most cooky's and scripts are necessary to view a website properly. When you fill in a form, but you have the cooky's disabled there's a problem. When you've disabled scripts and you want to see a website with a javascript menu, there's also a problem. In theorie a script can activate a virus, so when you want maximum security it's best to deactivate scripts and cooky's. But when you want to surf normally, you best enable cooky's and scripts.

Downloading (illegal) programs from obscure web-sites will increase the change of downloading a virus.  There're also legal programs that contain "spyware" or "adware". Spyware is a peace of software that send information to a company about what you're doing on the internet. When you're surfing on sites about cars, the owner of the spywaresoftware can send you e-mail about cars. etc. An adware program will change the banners on your browser.Spyware is not illegal, but I think it's on the edge and I think that a real decent company don't use this kind of markerting.

By the way: it's not so difficult to find out where a website is hosted and often you can also find the owner of a site. (See for instance: www.godaddy.com )

Some sites (for example porno-sites) have a small free public part and a special memberpart. For this meber-part you have to download a program and you can see the special part. This program is a redialer and it chages the teletelnumber you use for the internet in another (expensive) one. Be carefull!!!!!! when you've leave the site and surf to another site, you still use the redialer. It also happens that the next time you go on the internet, your redialer is used again......(well you'll discabout it after you've received the tel-bill).

Paying and doing finance on the internet still contains a risk. Usually banking sites are safe, but is your computer safe? When your computer is hacked, is your creditcardnumber safe? The website that asked for your creditcard number, is it reliable, or is it an criminal site on a free hosting provider?  In the real world you watch your wallet ad avoid the getho, well in the internet world you keep your creditcard number privat and only do business at trusted sites.

Be carefull filling in forms on all kinds of sites. It's nice to get something for free, but not iwhen you got spamed after that event. Don't always trust people on forums, chatsites etc. Most are honest people, but you never know. It's easy to cut a nice photo out of a magazine and pretend you're that nice looking girl. (Or the photo you show is real, but only 15 years old...)

Even when you're not doing anything dangerouse you still can get into trouble....your pc can be hacked. Well when you don't have your creditcard information on it a hacker is not the end of the world. Oke, you would feel stupid when you see a message like "your pc is hacked by the hack-king " but taht's not a big deal. Even when you're computer is used for a major attack on Microsoft, well its no fun, but you can live with that. It becomes serious when your computer is cracked. To be cracked is the same as being hacked, but a hacker only breakes in, a cracker is destroying things on your computer. He's stealing files, demolishing programs etc, etc.

You can secure yourself against hackers and crakers on the following ways:

The safest way is not to go on the internet

Shut the internet-connection when you're not using it. The longer you're on-line, the more time a hacker has to break in.

When your computer is on the internet, be present. When you're behind your pc you would notice it, when things are dissapearing on your pc, or when your pc is acting weird. When you're watching television you won't notice and the cracker has all the freedom he wants.

Use protection
The most important protection on the internet is a firewall. A firewall protects against hackers. An example of a free firewall is  ZoneAlarm (see software)

Beside a firewall  it's also good to use an anti-virus program. This program checks if there's a virus on your pc, or if an e-mail atachment is contaminated with a virus. Because virusses evaluate, a good virusprogram will be frequently updated with the new virusinfo. (Don't feel safe with a 5 years old virusprogram without updates) An example of a free  virusprogram is AVG. (see software) Some  e-mail accounts (for example. hotmail)  have a standard virusscan for e-mail. When you're not sure if a file on your computer contains a virus, just send it as an attachment to yourself and the virusscan on your e-mail will check it. (I've used this technique when somebody did send an e-mail, telling me to delete a file "kernal.sys" when it would be found on the computer. (It didn't contain a virus, but it was an essential windows-part) Such an e-mail with a false warning is called a hoax-virus. It dusn't contain a virus, but the way people react on the message makes it work like a virus.

Emoticons

Emoticons are symbols that express a feeling. The most famouse emoticon is :-)
When you turn :-) 45º you will see that it's a smiling face!
 

  . . eyes
        |       nose
    ____    mouth

:-) means happy;
:-( means not happy

A list of some emoticons is on the page emoticons

Abreviations

When using sms (short message service) at the mobile tel, typing words is rather complicated. Therefore people who like sms often use abreviations. Abreviations often are used together with emoticons.

(_,_)    = bottoms
=>       = conclusion
i-net     = internet
w8       = wait
4u       = for you
asap    = as soon as possible
b4       = before
bbl      = be back later
brb     = be right back
cu       = see you
fubar   = fudged up beyond all recognition
faq      = frequently asked questions
fyi       = for your information
gal      = get a life
gigo    = garbage in, garbage out
hand   = have a nice day
iae     = in any case
imo    = in my opinion
jit       = just in time
lol      = laughing out loud
msg   = message
rtfm   = read the fucking manual
thx    = thanks
ttyl    = talk to you later
wysiwyg = what you see is what you get
yr     = yeah, right.

Why is the surfing going slow?

The surfing speed is depended on the kind of connection you use. You will surf quicker with an old computer with adsl-moden then a modern computer with a teletel-modem. This is because all internet pages you visit are (temporarely) downloaded on your computer.

For example: when you have an old 28kb modem, an internet page will load twice as slow then when you have a 56kb modem. Another issue is the connection of the site you're visiting. When this site has a bad connection and a lot of visitors, theire pages will load slow. So  websites with lots of visitors often load slower in peak-hours. It's also obvious that a website on a modern server in the USA will load quicker then a website on a old website in Africa, connected with a teletel-line.

Because movies, pictures and sound are "big" files, fancy looking websites with lots of pictures or menu's in flash will load slowly.

Copy things from a  websites (with internet explorer)

Copy HTML and scripts:
Go in the explorer-menu to View
Select the option Source
Now you will see the source in notepad
Use the key-combination Ctrl-A (select all) (or select with the mouse)
Use the key-combination Ctrl-C (copy)
Open the file you want the code in.(for instance Frontpage)
Use the key-combination Ctrl-V (paste)

Copy pictures:
On the internetpage, select the picture with the mouse
Click on the right button and select "Save picture as"
Save the picture on your computer.

Copy the entire page, with all files:
Go in the explorer-menu to File
Select Save as...
Choose  webpage
(all parts of the page will be saved in different folders.)

You can now look the page off-line, unless there're scripts etc that are on the servers or on other pages.